Ionic race who settled on the shores of Greece, and dwelt 

 by the mouths of its rivers. 



Previous to the Revolution, the ships of Salem, of New- 

 buryport, of Beverly and of Marblehead were seen on all 

 waters, and under the most adverse conditions and op- 

 pressive restrictions, a profitable and extensive commerce 

 was established, and, these conditions and restrictions re- 

 moved by the achievement of independence, that commerce 

 assumed grander proportions, and no seaport was better 

 known than Salem, and her ships carried the new ensign 

 of freedom and power wherever there was hope of trade 

 and profit. The spirit of the independent American 

 farmer, gathering his annual return from the soil, existed 

 side by side with that of the lordly Venetian who would 

 exact his tribute from all the world. 



Seargent S. Prentiss, in his address before the New 

 England Society of New Orleans in 1845, said: " It is up- 

 on the unstable element the sons of New England have 

 achieved their greatest triumphs." But neither agricul- 

 ture nor commerce could satisfy that mounting desire for 

 material advance, which had here found lodgment. Manu- 

 factures were early established against the most adverse 

 conditions of all. Discouraged by the home government, 

 hampered by restrictive laws, and unjustly taxed, they 

 gained their foothold which has never been lost. Leather 

 and shoes and hats and carriages and workings in wood 

 and iron from the earlier days, and later with the advent 

 of the power loom, the waters of her streams were made to 

 join the soil to nourish and enrich the inhabitants of 

 Essex, and to-day along the northern boundary of our 

 county flows the most noted river devoted to manufac- 

 tures in the world. Side by side with the development of 

 agriculture have grown all the varied industries which 

 apart from natural resources, produce the wealth of a na- 

 tion. For no one of these did Essex County possess any 

 peculiar advantage or fitness distinct from other sections 

 of the country. No mines of useful or precious metals 



